"Little boy, you are not telling the truth."
William looked up into a thin, spectacled face.
"I wasn't tellin' it to you," he remarked, wholly unabashed.
A little girl with dark curls took up the cudgels quite needlessly in William's defence.
"He's a very brave boy to do all that," she said indignantly. "So don't you go saying things to him."
"Well," said William, flattered but modest, "I didn't say I did it, did I? I said my uncle—well, partly my uncle."
Mr. Percival Jones looked down at him in righteous wrath.
"You're a very wicked little boy. I'll tell your father—er—I'll tell your sister."
For Ethel was approaching in the distance and Mr. Percival Jones was in no way loth to converse with her.
